02-05-2016, 04:51 AM
I refuse to get involved in any discussion that authoritatively states: "it means".
I can live with "the meaning I get from this" or "what I have derived from this reading". I can also deal with "I think it means". And I can definitely live with poems that have many, many possible meanings with several shades of nuance as long as they're not utterly obscure with no way to unlock them except to impose meaning onto them. That's just lazy writing.
Good poets don't set out to deliberately write an open poem with myriad possible interpretations. Fortunately for those of us who love it, that's just what happens when a good poet sits down to write.
I can live with "the meaning I get from this" or "what I have derived from this reading". I can also deal with "I think it means". And I can definitely live with poems that have many, many possible meanings with several shades of nuance as long as they're not utterly obscure with no way to unlock them except to impose meaning onto them. That's just lazy writing.
Good poets don't set out to deliberately write an open poem with myriad possible interpretations. Fortunately for those of us who love it, that's just what happens when a good poet sits down to write.